


And Then She Was Free

by Tumtumthomasto



Category: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Persona Series
Genre: AU, Cancer, F/M, Hospitals, Mentions of Cancer, Other, demons sorta, rei back before she dies when she is terminally ill and bitter, rei beore she changes her name, rei has cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 23:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5224859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tumtumthomasto/pseuds/Tumtumthomasto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rei, back in the times that she was terminally ill and still called Niko. She struggles to find purpose in what remains of her existence, never having been one for miracles, but one day finds herself in the presence of one such miracle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then She Was Free

It is there, in the field, that she extends her arm to the sky and curls her fingers as if clutching onto a fabric that is the stars. The wind whispers sweet nothings to her, brushing her hair up to tickle her cheeks. Nothing in all the world could be more beautiful.   
Niko stood there, observing as the sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of the night. Her gaze suddenly falters, eyes wandering to the IV line that wound up her forearm before digging into the skin at her wrist and disappearing. What an ugly thing, it ruins the moment, she thinks bitterly. Raising her other arm, she brushes her finger pads against the tube before violently tearing it from her flesh. The IV cord unwinds, slipping from her to fall uselessly at the base of the pole, fluids spilling out in waste upon the grass. 

Niko's lips curl into a smile, she was free. 

The field, the sky, the earth, everything slips away from her in an instant and soon she is watching the sky reel back before her eyes. Her knees buckle, giving out as her strength leaves her. Niko cries out wordlessly, "Not now, not yet. Just a little longer..." But the universe doesn't heed her call and she falls backwards, arms still reaching out to the stars she yearns to touch. Soon her legs are where her arms once was, with the grace of a train-wreck, she's sprawled it on the hospital floor convulsing. It was never a field of grass, there was never a night sky for her to marvel at, only the plaster walls and linoleum floor that smelt not of flowers but of dead skin. Her frail body writhes against the ground, IV pole having clattered down with her soon after she removed the needle. She couldn't go more than a few minuets off the IV, away from the wires and machines that tied her too the dreadful hospital bed.  
Nurses stream down the hall crying out to her, foolish Niko who left the room, foolish Niko who keeps nearly killing herself just trying to walk the hall, foolish Niko who should have died ten years ago. They lift her from the floor, she's not much to carry, lay her back in a gurney and proceed to cart her away back into her own personal prison. 

 

She couldn't even see the sky from her room. Only the concrete roof of a high-school, a pleasure of those who live easily, school. They'd of course given her books and teachings, but she'll never know the joys of an average life. She recalls that she hasn't been in a public school since she got sick, which was when she was seven years old. In ten years, one forgets what "normal" feels like. Her eyes narrow bitterly at the rooftop as she observers a few girls eating lunch, their bodies swaying back and forth in the throes of laughter and jubilant motions. What were they eating? Squinting does little to allow her a better look at the food they'd barely picked apart in light of conversing. It wouldn't matter anyway, not that she could even enjoy eating whatever it was. Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth she thinks of how everything tastes like soap nowadays, her illness had taken everything from her, even the simplest joys of tasting the food one eats...or y'know, keeping down solids.   
With a shuddering sigh she tears her eyes from the scene, thinking once again to the sky, if only the roof of the hospital was a slightly less prominent dip, then she could see the sky.

"Niko..." Her surgeon says in a feather-light tone, even in conversation they saw her as fragile. She makes a humming sound in her throat to signify that she was listening.  
"You can't keep doing this...your health is suffering due to these outbursts. You know that you need the IV, and you know that you can't just...leave." He sounds defeated at the last word, for there was no use lying to her anymore about whether or not she'd make full recovery. She knew, they knew, she could never leave the walls of the hospital...as long as cancer was nipping at her heels, she'd forever be trapped.   
"I don't care. I want to go outside...I want to feel the grass...breathe fresh air." She whispers, not once tearing her eyes from the window, clenching her fists into the sheets of her bed. The doctor clicks his tongue against his teeth at her words, starting another supposedly comforting talk, but she interrupts, "You might as well strap me to this bed, I won't stop...what's the point...I'm dying anyway."  
"Niko."  
"It's the truth and everyone in this building knows it. I'm dying. Cancer is killing me, I don't have long..." The doctor sits up from the stool he had brought towards her bed abruptly, hissing solemnly at her cynical nature. 

"People have come back from illness such as this, in worse states than you. But, they couldn't do it without the will to live. Niko...if you're already convinced that this cancer has killed you, then that's exactly what's going to happen."   
With that, he leaves.

Niko's fingers tremble from the strain of gripping the sheets too tightly, tears pricking at her eyes, only to be furiously wiped away. Her fingers curl into the fleeting strands of hair that framed her face, the last notable tuft of her blonde locks that remained after chemotherapy. A strand or two slips away between her fingers and her whole body is wracked with tremendous sobs. Why did they have to keep pressing her to live, to /enjoy/ what little of her life remains? There was /nothing/ to enjoy about endless pain, tasteless food, losing your hair, isolation, any of it...it was all hell, her personal hell.   
"WHAT DO YOU WANT!! JUST TAKE ME! TAKE ME ALREADY!!! I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE!!!" She shrieks, beating her fists against her head and allowing the sobs to wrack her shape. The monitors beep weakly as her heart-rate spikes in light of her tantrum, the nurses knew not to come to these cries, she'd lose her strength soon. Niko weeps, distantly taking note of her labored breathing before slumping back in her bed. The pillow sags, the mattress creaks, and she moans right along with the springs in anguish of her unfortunate situation. Life fades from her, her strength sapped out as if a strong puff of air has been blown upon the candle's flame of her energy.   
"Just...take me...I don't want to be here anymore." She loses consciousness soon after, darkness swallowing her whole, just as it always did.

 

"How long has it been since you've truly been outdoors?" An unfamiliar voice echoes through the darkness, and for some reason she's inclined to respond.

"I got sick...when I was only a little girl, seven years old. They hospitalized me and as my treatments grew more...strenuous...the less of the outside world I've gotten to se--"

"How long?" It presses.

"About...four and a half years." 

"Why do you want out so badly? Your health will decline if you are away from this place...to what purpose do you put yourself in danger?"

"I've...got nothing to lose."

There's a silence that follows her statement, the presence accompanying the voice fluttering about the recesses of her mind. The darkness peels away like a sheet being lifted above a bed, the sky erupting into her vision. Niko's eyes grow wide and she blinks in disbelief, this must be a dream. Of course, the only time she sees this place is in her dreams. Her shoulders slump, eyes losing some of their wondrous gleam in light of her realization.   
"This...is where you want to be? Yes?" The voice asks, hushed and contemplative. She nods her head, curling her toes absentmindedly into the grass.   
"More than anything...just...one more time, before the cancer gets me."

"You don't want to live the way you're living...any longer? Does that mean you wish for death?" The voice inquires as she focuses her gaze on a constellation.   
"I just...there's no hope of me recovering..." Niko murmurs to the disembodied voice. "It just seems like, death is the only option."

"What if there was?" 

She laughs dryly at this, "You can't just snap your fingers and cure cancer...and I don't believe in miracles." She says as her laughter slinks away. The voice offers her a similar chuckle, somehow amused by her cynicism.   
"Perhaps you should start believing." It then says, "What would you do...if you were healed?"

This voice sure was full of questions, questions she already knew the answers to. What a strange dream this was.   
"I'd have a normal life...it's all I've ever wanted. I'd go to school like the other kids and I'd make friends and go out to eat...and I'd just...live. I'd go out to fields like this," She gestures all around her, "And I'd lay in the grass for hours...I'd soak in the sunlight and make daisy chains for my hair...y'know, because I'd actually have hair." Niko smiles bitterly, crouching to the ground and taking a seat upon the grass. Looking about the grass, she finds a daisy, and plucks it from the ground.   
"It's pretty funny...how stupid I am for all this wistful thinking. I'm...as they say, pushing up the daisies....I'm a goner." 

"Maybe not."

She wakes soon after that, almost with a start. Niko sucks in a startled breath, not used to having her dreams end so suddenly. With a creak of her joints and a sigh slipping past her lips, she sits up in her bed. Something was amiss. There was something between her fingers. Figuring that it was just a wrinkle in the sheets she thought to dismiss the feeling, only to find a daisy tucked between her index and middle digits. Niko's eyes grow wide, how on earth was this daisy here...was it the one from her dream? Bringing it up closer to her face she confirms that it is really and truly there, straight from her dream. The voice in her head might have had a good point, she thinks, maybe it was prime time she started believing in miracles.

 

In the days to come Niko kept that daisy on her bedside table, glancing at it every now and again and thinking about the words of the strange voice. Maybe she wasn't a goner after all, but each time her mind wanders down the more optimistic avenue her anxiety towards hope pierces through. There's no way her cancer would go away, her vital organs were eaten up and her stomach would be failing her within the month. She's a dead girl walking, no number of strange voices could change that but...how did the daisy get there. Too many contradictions. She huffs, crossing her arms in frustration at the wilting flower. With one more fleeting glance at the daisy, she turns her head to the window again, a nurse cautiously approaching the bed to fool around with the IV fluids. Niko's eyes remain averted from the now common event, observing the same group of girls as they made their way to their rooftop lunch meet. A few boys had accompanied them this time, equally as happy as the girls. As she watches yet another event that occurs day to day in the same fashion she finds a certain determination rise up inside herself again.   
"Niko, where'd you get this pretty flower?" The nurse asks, fastening the IV bag back into position.   
"Somewhere." There's a light chuckle in response to Niko's reply, which earns the nurse a bitter gaze.  
"It's not like you to have visitors."

Her words hung in the air like a toxic gas as she goes .  
It's not like you to have visitors.

Yeah, who's going to want to come see a balding thirteen year old girl, rotting away and confined to a bed for the rest of her days? Not even her own mother and father wanted to come watch the slow decay of their once precious little girl. She was too much of a burden financially, why even look at the sole reason you're barely scraping by? Niko hisses through her teeth at the thought, her parents should have the sense to realize the futility of keeping her hooked up. 

She finds herself looking to the daisy again.

"Hey...why, why did you give me the daisy?" She whispers to herself, crazily hoping that the voice would respond. There's only a silence and her shoulders slump in disappointment, how dumb to think it was real.  
"Because."   
She nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound.  
"Because, the least I could do was bring you...a piece of that place." The voice coos softy to her. Niko leans across her bed to take the daisy in her hands once again.  
"Can...can you do more?" She finds herself almost squeaking the request, clinging so desperately to the hope she wasn't dreaming.  
"More...?" It echoes hollowly.  
"If...you like," she furrows her brow, "I wanna see something. Can you bring me more daisies?" 

There's a shift in the atmosphere, she feels it in the room. Something changes. Blinking in confusion and looking around the room she scans the area for any signs of the change she felt. A darkness gathered at the ceiling of the room and Niko gasps in surprise at the peculiar development, clambering out from under the blankets to sit on her knees atop the bed.   
"How many more?" It asks.  
"Hundreds." She exhales, staring up into the darkness at the ceiling. It was almost as if a small portion of the sky had been painted above her, squinting, she could make out constellations. The sea of stars floating above her captivated her, drawing her into its depths as she searched. A daisy falls from the spot, followed by a shower of petals and daisy heads. Niko feels laughter bubble up into her throat, a smile creasing her lips.   
It was real.  
Allowing her eyes to flutter closed, she raises her hands to the shower of daisies and catches them in her hands. It was as if ever daisy from the field of her dreams was falling on her like a blanket, warmth and cheer spreading through her like wildfire. 

"Are you...happy?" It asks, in a tone so vulnerable it almost disrupts her giggles. She nods her head vigorously, falling back into the bed of flowers and twisting her hands in the petal covered sheets.   
"Yes." She finally says, letting the daisy petals brush against her cheeks as they fell. 

"What are you...? Who...?" She finds herself asking after a moment's more in the daisies. The voice takes its time responding, the bubble of starts to ripple slightly.   
"I am...Chronos, and I am..." It seems to be at a loss for words, "I am not the same as you."

"Are you an angel, God?" She inquires, eyes fluttering open.

"I don't believe so..."

"Alright. But why're you here? Why do this for me?" 

"Because...I am tired of watching you suffer. I wanted to see you happy."

"There's so many other people in the world suffering, why not make them happy?"

"I was drawn to you. For a purpose I know not...perhaps it is fate, if you believe in such concepts."

"I don't. But it's better than no re--"  
The door clicks open, the doctor was there. She'd been so caught up in the precious moment that she had lost track of time. Niko sits up abruptly, flower petals scattering and flying off into the floor.   
"Where on earth...did all these flowers...?" The doctor eyes her in shock, looking up only to slap a hand over his mouth in astonishment. Niko finds her own eyes growing wide, looking to the ceiling were the pool of stars still hovered. This was now a hundred percent real, what does one even do to explain such an occurrence?

"Chronos they can't see you! The, the doctor can't..." She sputters, fumbling around in the bed as if she could somehow reverse or hide the moment. The doctor backs up slowly before freezing dead in his tracks, actually, everything stops. It was as if time was frozen entirely. Niko blinks in confusion, eyeing a petal as it hung suspended in midair, stuck in time.   
"Better?" It asks, curious.   
"What did you...?" Niko slowly slides from her bed, dragging the IV pole with her as she scaled the room. Extending an arm, she touches the face of the doctor to find him entirely frozen and unaware.  
"We can speak privately...in this timeless place. No one can interfere while time has ceased it's motions." Chronos explains the situation as if it were a common event, basic knowledge. Niko continues to stand, dumbstruck that time had somehow stopped altogether under the influence of the strange entity known as Chronos. 

"What all else can you do?" She chirps, craning her neck to look once more to the growing pool of darkness above the bed.   
"Depends on what you want done. I...I want to make you happy."

She could take advantage of this. 

An idea pops into her head and it's frightening, to even consider it a possibility. 

For the first time, since she was seven years old, a hope blossoms in her chest. Miracles suddenly become a possibility, this, whatever it was, could be the cure she's been fighting for her whole life.

"I want to get better." She says, "That would make me the happiest girl on earth."  
"But...earlier you said that death was your only option, are you implying that matters have changed." Chronos says, speaking slowly as if to work over it's own statement.  
"I never thought there could be any other options for me...I'm dying as we speak due to cancer, an illness that almost always kills it's victims." Niko makes her way over to the bed, bracing her hands against the mattress for support. Even now, just standing and walking back and forth her strength waned. "People like me don't get lucky...but, If...you could maybe...well." She grabs a fistful of daisies, "If you can bend time, materialize flowers from a place I've only ever seen in my dreams...surely you can help with my sickness." 

Chronos, the dark pool that she knows it to be, stirs oddly at her request. She casts her gaze upwards, "Please..." she murmurs, watching the movements of the pool. Suddenly it moves, travels down the wall until it grows at the floor. Niko's eyes chase it's movements, observing as the darkness takes on a more solid shape.   
Whatever Chronos was, it was right when it said it wasn't human. The creature that materializes before her looks only remotely humanoid. It stood much taller than herself, it's flesh a blanket of void and stardust. Three horn-like spires rest atop it's head where two particularly noticeable stars must be it's eyes. Niko gasps in a mixture of wonder and astonishment, reaching out to touch the beast, only to have it's shape ripple like water. Retracting her hand, she examines her fingers to see that some of the oily blackness had remained on her fingers. What on earth was Chronos? Did it really matter? If this thing could cure cancer, she wouldn't care if it were a talking rabbit or satan himself.

"It would...make you the happiest girl in the world, to be cured of your ailments?" It echoes her own words back to Niko, receiving a nod from her in response.   
Chronos then extends it's hand to her, reaching out to curl a strand of her thinning hair along it's fingers. Finding herself shivering at it's touch she wills herself to remain still. Being still becomes and increasingly difficult task as she feels a burst of...life(?) rippling through her with blazing fury. She finds herself to stunned to speak, her throat growing dry and a croak being the only sound she could muster. Squeezing her eyes shut, she feels tears bead up in the corners of her eyes and a tingling sensation ripples across her skin.

Moments pass before she regains her composure and the strangeness fades, she opens her eyes to see that she can't see anything at all for a wall of thick /hair/ that blocked her vision. Hair, her long beautiful golden blonde hair was flowing down all over her face, spilling over her shoulders to rest at her hips, just as it had when she was young. It was back, it was all back. A scream of pure joy rips through her, whipping her hair back with a swing of her hair she bounces up and down with unbridled joy. Chronos eyes her, tilting it's head and holding it's hands out in a mollifying motion.   
"I am...not finished yet."   
She stops dead, as if moving a single hair would break the magic. Niko cannot, however, wipe the grin from her face. Chronos chuckles softly, it's white eyes wandering about her shape.  
"Where does...cancer start?" It inquires.   
"It started in my stomach." She's never before sounded so eager to talk about her cancer but, after having her hair fall out chunks at a time over the years and it suddenly growing back, she couldn't be happier. Chronos's hands hover over her a moment, trying to locate the origin of her sickness before touching her again. The same strange tingle and shake rocks through her body once more, but this time it takes her down. She barely even registers what is happening as her eyes roll back in her head, her body going as limp as a rag-doll as she falls into the floor. Darkness swallows her up and for hours, it's only her and the voice.

 

"Niko...? Niko...what on earth...happened to you?" It's the doctor, even with her eyes closed she knows the voice. But this time, she doesn't dread his call. A smile pierces her features, she doesn't even open her eyes yet.  
"Hello doctor." She coos, voice so sweet and uncharacteristic of her old self that the man is taken off guard.   
"Niko...this is, impossible."  
"Didn't you always tell me to believe in miracles, to think positive, to live...?" She hisses, tasting the words. There's a silence that follows and she takes it as her cue to open her emerald eyes. A vibrancy that had long sense been present in her gaze shimmers within her green pools and she shifts those same eyes to the startled doctors and nurses that streamed into the room. She looks to their faces with an eerie smile before taking the IV tube in her hands, pulling it out from her wrist even as the nurses make startled sounds of protest. The wound that would once ooze blood seals before a single drop of her claret could escape the vein. 

"Isn't this the point where you ask me how I'm feeling...or does that not matter to you anymore? I know that every single one of you has already given up on me..." She murmurs, examining her unblemished skin. A power surges through her, she feels Chronos's presence just beneath her skin, giving her such strength. 

"Well, I'll go ahead and tell you anyway..." A pause, she wets her lips, just to taste each syllable as it breeches her mouth, "For a dying girl...I've never felt more alive."

And with that, she was ready to blow the roof off that wretched building. Tear through the bars that had confined her all this time. Obliterate the rooms and halls that have robbed her, facilitated her illness's pursuit in snuffing out her life. As soon as her bare feet make contact with the floor, she knew she was ready.   
Niko was gone in that very instance, Niko had been killed by the cancer that took her soul from age seven. Niko had faded away into some dark place where death acts as her only light. For, in these moments...a new star was born.

She thinks, in the back of her mind that she'll need a new name.  
"Philé." Chronos suggests, she shakes her head, it was too hard to pronounce.  
"How about...Rei?" Niko was such a boring name anyway, it had a domineering meaning. Second Child, what, was she not good enough...had to be named as something secondary? It was no more. Rei was much more fitting.   
Chronos makes no objections and her grin grows all the wider in response.

She steps forwards, the nurses and doctors being knocked aside by some unseen force surrounding her. They were left to slap uselessly against the walls, like insects being swatted away.  
"I'm free." She whispers to herself, flicking her wrist and opening the door. "I'm free!" It was a battle cry. Rei darts down the hall with speed and energy she had long forgotten use of. Her feet failing her, leaving her to stumble onto the ground but she only laughs. People from down the hall gaze at her in fear, as if she were a monster let loose from her pen. It truly was impossible to anticipate a girl who's been terminally ill for years to suddenly get up and run down the hall. But she was no ordinary case anymore. She wasn't even the same person anymore.

She rushes down the hall, swinging the doors open before she even reaches them and plowing down all in her path. Her feet would surely be marred due to the force of her running on the pavement of the hospital parking lot.   
"Where are you going?" Chronos asks, it's voice a mere buzz against the whip of the wind against her.

"I don't know!" She chirps with a laugh, splaying her arms out as if she were flying.

 

She runs for hours, days, time flickering in and out as she made her way to nowhere.

Eventually, her running came to a stop.   
She stops, placing her hands atop her knees and trembling, breath coming in short, exhausted bursts, yet a smile still rests on her face.   
"H-hey...Chronos." She says, "You..." A breath breaks her speech momentarily, "You should get a new name too! We, we can do this together...right?"   
He is silent for a moment and she is willing to wait, regaining her breath as she soaks in the silence.   
"I suppose..."   
She beams.  
"Ummmmm....hmm, let me think." She straightens her back, narrowing her eyes at the distant path before her. It was so peaceful, away from the city and away from the morbid air of the hospital hall.  
"Zen..." She murmurs, a warm gust of wind stirring up the leaves, sending them skipping across the asphalt.   
"Zen." He echoes, as if in confirmation. 

With a nod of her head, she starts walking down the road again, the pavement peeling away into broken chunks until levying off into a dirt road. Suddenly, it occurs to her that she's seen this place, familiarity blossoms in her chest. 

Before her was none other than the field of her dreams.

It is there, in the field, that she extends her arm to the sky and curls her fingers as if clutching onto a fabric that is the stars. The wind whispers sweet nothings to her, brushing her hair up to tickle her cheeks. Nothing in all the world could be more beautiful. She stood there, observing as the sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of the night.

Rei's lips curl into a smile, she was free.

**Author's Note:**

> Just basically, if she hadn't died and was given new life from Chronos. He did have lots of power anyway, being a time god and all. No memory wipes in this, I decided not to write up to her dying and then having her memories taken. Oh well.


End file.
